Summary of Section 1, pages 247-254 in Donna Rosenthal's The Israelis.

This section of the reading was about a guy named Yasser who is a pediatrician who treats both Jews and Arab-Palestinians alike. He does not judge who he treats by their backgrounds. He along with others are pushing towards a non-segragated pre-school for Jews and Arabs in Heifa. Yasser talked about how he felt conflicted between the Israeli parts of him and the Palestinian Arab parts of his identity. Yasser is apart of the growing Muslim middle class.
This section also talks about the Palestinian Arabs and how their life is now that they are the minority. Of the 160,000 arabs that stayed are mostly disoriented,poor and illiterate. The Israeli government took away 40% of land that was owned by the Palestinian Arabs. In the new state of Israel, the Arabs became the minority where the Jews became the majority. Many of the Arabs were refugees and did not have homes. They were displaced people. Yasser's parents were one of these refugee people, they were taken out of their homes, the village was evacuated because it was a "Military stretegic location"


Comments: